Monday, November 16, 2015

When you arrange a song, you write the music for each instrument. Sometimes, that means writing music fro instruments that weren't part of the song originally.

Bill Frisell is an amazing guitar player and has a distinctive style you ca learn to listen for after getting to know a few of his songs. He arranges an album called The Sweetest Punch by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach.

"Almost as soon as they had finished writing, I received some piano scores and a demo tape with Elvis singing and Burt playing the piano. What a thrill and honor it was to hear these twelve beautiful tunes before anyone else on the planet. I was then left on my own to decide how to arrange them. This recording was done in NYC while Burt and Elvis were working in L.A. on Painted From Memory. None of us heard what the others were doing until we all finished. I can't imagine this ever happening again-truly once-in-a-lifetime experience."

Before you read about Bill Frisell on wikipedia, listen to a few of the songs of the album The Sweetest Punch and tell me how many musicians play in the jazz band.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Here are the lyrics for the Major General Song. I dare you to try to sing it in tempo.

I am the very model of a modern Major-General
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news
(pause)
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse
(x3)
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus
I know the scientific names of beings animalcules
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General

Because my school celebrated Earth Day today, I decided to have Grade 2 listen to the three versions of Neil Young's Who's Gonna Stand Up (and Save the Earth)? They enjoyed the acoustic version, were humbled by the orchestral version, and rocked out to the live version with Crazy Horse - so much so that we made a rock video with them individually playing air guitar, air drums, or singing.

I wasn't sure if they fully understood the message, since even most adults don't understand the severity of the issue or are in denial to it's causes.

As I was quietly finishing a rubric in my room, I heard a student sing the refrain from across the hall:

The song is so important in music in rock and roll history that it was put on the Voyager 1 Golden Record (by direction of the amazing Carl Sagan) and launched into space. (Voyager 1 is still traveling at 17 kilometers per second and is 19,571,030,000 kilometers from the Earth (yes, that's 19.5 billion).